Today's confirmation that Apple is going x86 makes today a historic day in the industry. It may mean that Microsoft might see a few percent decline of their market share the next few years, but what about Linux? If Linux were to lose an equal amount of share it would alter its spread to the desktop, a spread that has been very positive so far.

Microsoft won't do the work to port Windows Server to POWER. Why? Because AIX rules the POWER market and there's nothing MS can do to catch up at this point. But... MS will support Cell, since there will be a huge gaming market attached to a Cell-based PC. Problem: MS will be very late in the Cell game, and Linux will be there first. Proprietary software would need to be recompiled at best, and most likely would require something closer to a complete rewrite. Open source compilers would have to be first, Intel never learned and keeps ICC closed to this day.

Intel and Apple are on a sinking ship, soon to be consumed by IBM and Microsoft. Linux will feast and get fat on the corpses left behind. How many years are really left for the rich client anyway? In a market where most of the new computing devices are ultraportable, hardware must be special-purpose and software must versatile. Linux was born on the rich client but was designed to thrive on anything. Sadly, my cellphone won't ever have a 450W PSU, so I doubt the Pentium D is applicable.